Reevely: Tories decry gun violence in Vanier … that doesn't exist

Vanier has suffered because the provincial government cut funding for the Ottawa police force’s guns and gangs unit, Ottawa-Vanier Progressive Conservative candidate André Marin charged Monday morning, at a campaign event that failed in every important way.

“What I’ve heard from proud communities, from families, from businesses, is that people are worried. They’re afraid,” Marin said after a “roundtable discussion on community safety” at the Knights of Columbus hall on McArthur Avenue. “They’re afraid of walking out the door and being hit by a stray bullet. They’re scared about their loved ones, their sons and daughters, accidentally getting caught in the middle of crossfire.”

Well, that’s not really what the roundtable participants said. Aside from Brown, Marin and an organizer, the roundtable had:

financial planner Paul Drouin, whose business focuses on millionaire clients, said he wanted to open an office on Montreal Road but couldn’t because it’s too dangerous;

Boys and Girls Club manager Dan Rees (they have a Vanier clubhouse down the street), who said youth engagement is the key to heading off criminality before it begins;

a fellow named Hassan Elmi, billed as a “community volunteer,” who in halting English said he worries when he sees young people “moving around” unsupervised at night and on weekends;

entrepreneur Barkhad Bahdon (his courier company and his janitorial company are on Morrison Drive in Ottawa West-Nepean), who also said opportunity is the key to keeping young people out of gangs and lamented that so many people think badly of Vanier as a place to do business; and

small-business promoter Yahya Mohamud, who lives in Ottawa West-Nepean and also talked about ending the cycle of poverty that leads young people who grow up on welfare to stay on it as adults.

They sat around a couple of folding tables pushed together in a cavernous room with Brown and Marin at the head. Each participant spoke for a minute or two. Drouin’s message was closest to Marin’s: he complained about street prostitution and the criminality he and his wife witness on Sunday afternoons after church, the likes of which people who don’t live in Vanier wouldn’t believe. Vanier is treated like the “bastard child” of Ottawa, he said, and he’s tired of it.

But the recurring theme was that young people need opportunity. Education, mentoring, productive things to do, chances to learn and to prove themselves.

“You’ve got to give them that power,” Bahdon said. “When they graduate from university, or they graduate from high school, there’s no future for them. Their parents live on assistance … There has to be something that the youth have to look forward to.”

No doubt Brown and Marin are keen on youth employment. But they talked about gunfire.

“As of today, Ottawa has experienced 57 shootings. It’s the highest ever. When you have a number like that — not just in Vanier, but you can see a disproportionate amount of shootings in Vanier — we have to look at this, we have to have this conversation,” Brown said.

We have to tackle serious crime before we can move onto more minor matters, Marin agreed. “A fish rots from the head,” he said.

They were flanked by placards the party had made up, plotting each of the 57 incidents this year (some in which people have been hit, some not) on a map of Ottawa. None of them has been in Vanier.

I’ll say that again. Complaining about Liberal neglect leading to gun violence in Vanier this year, the politicians put up maps showing no gun violence in Vanier this year.

The two agreed that what’s needed is strings-attached funding, forcing the police to put the money into the anti-gang unit whether the force wants to or not.

The provincial Liberals did this year reduce a grant program that paid for guns-and-gangs cops across Ontario. In 2015, the Provincial Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy was worth $600,000 to the Ottawa Police Service. In 2016, the province cut that roughly in half. At the same time, however, the province took over paying for the police who guard the courthouse here. That upload was worth $617,000.

Even if the guns-and-gangs funding had been cut entirely, Ottawa would have been $17,000 ahead. As it turned out, the net increase was closer to $350,000. Not as much as it would have been if the Liberals had preserved the gangs funding and uploaded the courthouse-security costs, it’s true, but it’s still more money, and the force was free to decide how best to spend it.

Chief Charles Bordeleau chose to put funding into street-level community policing and the police board approved. The force is hiring 25 additional officers this year and another 25 next year.

So let’s sum up: The Tory leader and his star candidate in Ottawa-Vanier held a community meeting that included almost nobody from the community, ignored what little they heard from attendees, fed the stereotype that Vanier’s a hellhole, and implied the police chief and the board that oversees him are doing their jobs wrong.

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